Can’t select vertices on torus
Orange marks everything that is selected. You can press Alt + A (Blender 2.8) or A (Blender 2.79) to deselect everything and then click on whatever edge or face you want to select. Keybindings have changed between these two Blender versions, which can cause some confusion.

Fully selected torus, press Alt + A to deselect
Select faces by left clicking (Blender 2.8) or right click (Blender 2.79)